I always think about what are the main reasons to go see a movie and what makes a movie great? One of the main reasons to go to a theater and watch a movie for two hours is to escape reality and think about other things. Another reason could be to compare your life to other people and perhaps imagine how you would react or deal with a certain challenging or even funny situation. Another reason could be to learn something new about a historical event that you never knew or learn about some true story that you never knew about before. After that, when you pay money to see a movie you expect some effort in terms of writing the screenplay and the production quality and this certainly is something that is never guaranteed when you pay to see a movie.

In July 1998 after several months of previews, there was a huge amount of buzz about the release of a new Steven Speilberg film entitled “Saving Private Ryan” , which was not only about the June 6, 1944 Normandy Invasion but also loosely about the true story of The Niland Brothers, and how the United States Army was trying to save what they thought was the only surviving brother in World War 2. The previews of Saving Private Ryan were initially showing Tom Hanks on a boat about to invade the coast of France in the beginning of the Normandy invasion and all the talk on the internet was about the realism that this movie would show about the horror of war. This is where “Saving Private Ryan” set itself apart from all other movies that have ever been made. For the first time, there was a war movie that showed what it was really like for thousands of young men during World War 2, most of them not even 20 years old who were killed and wounded during the largest invasion in human history. Even more remarkable about this groundbreaking film, the best Speilberg ever produced, was the fact that soon after the movie came out in July 1998, the veterans of the Normandy Invasion came out and spoke of the realism of this film and most especially what happened during the Normandy invasion.

While watching Saving Private Ryan for the first time in July 1998 and again in September 1998, I remember having thoughts of what it must be like for so many of these young men who thought they were invincible but in an instant their war experience was over in 20 seconds as soon as the door dropped down from the boat they were in and they were killed by massive incoming German machine gun fire, or they drowned because of their heavy equipment on the ocean floor or while trying to find cover, they were killed on the beach trying to get out of the Normandy coast onto land. For those few who made it to the cover of some of the cliffs of Normandy, they had to witness the horrible deaths of so many other men their age who were struggling to survive the first few moments of the invasion. Witnessing a horrible death in front of you as you follow had to be one of the worst experiences of these heroes whose actions that day, saved the world. The thoughts of terror of watching many other horrible deaths and knowing that you are next for me had to be one of the most extraordinarily difficult experiences these young men had to live through. This movie reminds​ all of us, better than any other War movie ever has, that in this life there is War and then everything else. Compared to the horrors of war, everything else is bullshit and pales in comparison.

After Saving Private Ryan came out many people came out and protested the extreme violence and death depicted in this movie, forgetting that showing this level of violence and war realism for the first time was the whole point of the film. Showing what really happened during a horrible war demonstrated a level of appropriate respect to those who survived and those who died not only during the Normandy Invasion but in all wars. I remember hoping that if more movies like this were made and enough people saw them that just maybe humanity would have fewer wars or think twice before sending so many young people to their early death.

Sadly due to the insanity of the Oscars, Saving Private Ryan did not win the best picture in1998; instead, the movie Shakespeare in Love won, for reasons unknown. Speilberg did win for best director but Tom Hanks did not win for best actor which was a major mistake, mostly likely due to the fact that he had already won 2 best actor Oscars which should have no bearing on who wins an Oscar each year.

Like all greatest of all time movies, you remember little scenes along with the big ones. For me the scene where Tom Hanks is getting his orders from his commander and looking at the high-octane Army coffee and sandwiches being made at a nearby table, the view of Normandy Bay where he looks at and notices the ships and thousands of soldiers in the biggest invasion in human history stand out as memorable. Finally Tom Hank’s “Earn it” at the end of this great film is one of the greatest lines ever spoken by any actor in any movie.

The odds are low after all these years that many people have not seen Saving Private Ryan, but if you haven’t you owe it to yourself to see one of the greatest movies that will ever be produced.

15 Facinating Facts about Saving Private Ryan

If Henry Ford ever got into the movie business he would have thought of the idea behind a movie like Mothers Day and for that matter Valentines Day and New Years Eve which were all directed by Gary Marshall. The idea behind this seems to be: what does it matter that we have scheduling conflicts with big stars who we know in advance would have an automatic draw at the box office? We can hire big box office stars for a few weeks and hand them a big payday for a short period of time. Why wait for a year or more to write a great script when in a few weeks we can write about 5 or 6 small stories and over the period of 2 hours try and connect some of the stories together later. The real point of this project is to bring in the audience because we have several big stars that come with their own fans who will pay to see them. What sense is the quality of a great story against a big box office? This strategy has spawned three movies of this type by Gary Marshall since 2010 that have been mostly panned by the critics and should for the most part never been made.



In the new film “Mothers Day”, Jennifer Anniston, Kate Hudson, Jason Sudeikis and Julia Roberts are all in 4 completely different and in some cases loosely connected stories which all in some ways involve mothers or Mothers Day which is the last day in the movie. None of these stories by themselves would be engaging enough to warrant a 2 hour movie, but the producers thought that if all 4 of the stories were in the same movie and at times connected then we can get away with 4 weak stories and produce a money making movie faster and cheaper than we could have otherwise. This is clearly what Henry Ford had in mind when he invented the concept of the assembly line to make cars. Create things in small pieces and then put it all together later. This works tremendously for making cars, but not so well for making a high-quality movie with a great story.



At the end of this two-hour experience and researching this movie I came to two realizations: #1 was despite the cookie-cutter assembly line idea in “Mothers Day” it was not that bad overall and #2 was that for some reason the actor Hector Elizondo is in almost all of the movies Gary Marshall has ever made. Due to the lack of a real movie here I cannot recommend Mothers Day, but you may want to see it if you are a big fan of the 4 stars involved, which was the exact point of making this movie in the first place.

Key and Peele is a comedy act that has been popular on the Comedy Central network for a number of years. Finally, after years of producing a small comedy show on cable, an opportunity comes along to make their first movie, entitled “Keanu”, which is about a very cute cat that gets kidnapped by drug dealers.

I am sure the process of coming up with this idea and producing the script took a while, perhaps a year and during this period, many meetings took place and eventually the realization that this is “our shot, we sure better make this movie funny and great because we may never get a shot like this again” came up. Considering all of this, I was surprised that this movie was not that good or funny at all. Most of the comedy falls flat, the overuse of the N word was disturbing and the best part of the entire story, the cute cat, was barely in this movie nearly enough. There is a long scene with Anna Faris playing truth or dare during a drug deal that ran way too long and was never funny and a following shootout that seemed way out of place for a movie about a kidnapped kitten.

While I thought the premise of this movie was a good one and the story should be funny because kittens are both cute and funny, but after all of that, there really has to be a good story or something funny to hold it all together and this movie has none of this.

This movie is 100% definitely not for kids due to the very cute kitten,  because there are many scenes of extreme violence and murder throughout.  This movie should be missed mainly because it’s a comedy and it was not nearly funny enough.

Keanu – IMDB